country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut,
and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move
there than anywhere else. Most political crises--the decisive votes,
which determine the fate of Government--are generally either on
questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of
foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government
has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the
legislature alone--for the House of Commons, and not for the House
of Lords--to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place
by the treaty they have made.

I think every one must admit that this is not an arrangement which
seems right on the face of it. Treaties are quite as important as
most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative
assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as
to the essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous. In the older
forms of the English Constitution, this may have been quite right;
the power was then really lodged in the Crown, and because
Parliament met very seldom, and for other reasons, it was then
necessary that, on a multitude of points, the Crown should have much
more power than is amply sufficient for it at present. But now the
real power is not in the Sovereign, it is in the Prime Minister and
in the Cabinet--that is, in the hands of a committee appointed by
Parliament, and of the chairman of that committee. Now, beforehand,
no one would have ventured to suggest that a committee of Parliament
on foreign relations should be able to commit the country to the
greatest international obligations without consulting either
Parliament or the country. No other select committee has any
comparable power; and considering how carefully we have fettered and
limited the powers of all other subordinate authorities, our